Name: University of Detroit Mercy
Location: Detroit, Michigan, which I hope was your first guess
Founded: Detroit College got started in 1877 by the Jesuits for the usual “Jesuits like teaching” reasons, and they moved on to university status and a name change to University of Detroit in 1911.
So, where does the mercy come in? That’s the Sisters of Mercy, the same group that opened up Mercyhurst as described in our last preview. They established Mercy College of Detroit in 1941. That was completely
separate from University of Detroit until 1990 when the two institutions pushed all their chips into the table together. That’s why you might remember Marquette playing Detroit a lot back in the day (we’ll get there eventually) but don’t remember calling it Detroit Mercy at the time.
What do we call them then? This one I know because I saw it in the Game Notes for a lacrosse game a few years back, as MU’s men’s lacrosse team plays Detroit Mercy regularly. Here’s their branding identification, straight out of the game notes for this contest:
The University of Detroit Mercy unveiled a new branding campaign with new The University of Detroit Mercy unveiled a new branding campaign with new university and athletic logos in September of 2016. For writing references, upon the first reference in copy, use “University of Detroit Mercy.” On the second reference, you can use “Detroit Mercy,” “Titans,” or “UDM.”
Thank you for your cooperation and your coverage of the Detroit Mercy Titans.
Enrollment: According to their Fast Facts page, 5,587 students. It’s unclear how much of that is undergraduate or graduate enrollment.
12 Rules And An Addendum: Detroit Mercy has one of those giant rocks on campus that everyone loves to paint for one reason or another. This itself does not make them special or interesting, lots of schools have something like this. I don’t know if other schools have a 12 bullet point set of rules about painting the rock, and that’s not counting the 10 sub-bullet points about rock painting etiquette, up to and including “All rock painting will be done sober.”
Oh, right, there’s 12 rules, one of which is 10 rules about etiquette, and then there’s two addendums to the rules, so there’s actually 14. There are also listed Rock Violation Repercussions. A second offense of the rules for a student group painting the rock — and only official student groups can paint the rock — will cause a $300 fine AND you will be banned from painting the rock for the rest of the semester.
I would like to know what happens if you commit your second offense — say, drinking a lot of beer while painting the rock — during the final week of the semester.
PLEASE COMPLETE YOUR PAPERWORK: The following is a list of student organizations that UDM has put on blast on the Student Organization webpage for not being 100% in compliance with campus rules in order to be considered an active organization on campus in Winter 2026:
Ahlulbayt Student Association
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority
Chi Eta Phi Incorporated
Creative Needs Project
Detroit Mercy Film Collective
Detroit Mercy Pep Band
Gamma Phi Beta Sorority
Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity
Lebanese Student Association
MEAGN Student Advisory Board
Muslim Student Association
South Asian Student Assocation
Students and Parents
The Halimah Project
UDM Music Club
Undergraduate Student National Dental Association
Veteran Student Organization
Yemeni Student Association
I will let you figure out which one caught my eye to type the entire list out.
And yes, I did find it on brand that the Detroit Mercy Intelligence Club is on top of their compliance work.
Nickname: Titans
Why “Titans?” According to a blog from the university itself, they elected to stop being the Tigers in 1924 because they wanted to avoid branding confusing with the other Detroit Tigers, to which I say: I don’t think anyone was confusing you with the Major League Baseball team in town, even if they wouldn’t win a World Series until 1935. There seems to be no true explanation as to why they went with Titans other than the Greek mythology Titans and so that sounded cool.
The Guy In Suit mascot? That’s Tommy Titan, and it turns out that it started as a Guy In Costume mascot back in 1977.
Notable Alumni: Actor/comedian Keegan-Michael Key, who is betraying his undergraduate degree every time he cheers for Penn State where he got a grad degree; author Elmore Leonard, best known for his works that have been turned into movies and TV, such as Get Shorty, Out of Sight, and Justified; Thomas Thewes, co-founder of Compuware; actor Ted Raimi; former Milwaukee Country District Attorney E. Michael McCann; and Glynn Lunney, NASA Flight Director who was on duty during Apollo 11’s lunar ascent and Apollo 13’s in-flight ordeal.
Last Season: 17-15, 12-8 Horizon League. 17 wins is the most by a UDM squad since Ray McCallum guided the Titans to back-to-back 20 win seasons in in 2012 and 2013.
Final 2025-26 KenPom.com Ranking: #218 out of 365 teams, up from their preseason rank of #298
Final 2025-26 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #185, up from their preseason rank of #301
Current 2026-27 KenPom.com Ranking: #289 out of 365 teams, up from their preseason rank of #292
Current 2026-27 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #242
Preseason Poll: Detroit Mercy was picked to finish seventh in the 12 team Horizon League this season. Their point total of 271 in the polling leaves them a little bit closer to 8th place and Purdue Fort Wayne’s 244 points than it does to Milwaukee’s sixth place finish with 309 points.
Head Coach: Mark Montgomery, entering his third season in charge of the Titans and 13th as a Division 1 head coach. He’s only ever finished 11 seasons in charge because he was fired after starting 1-7 in January of the 2020-21 season after going 18-13 and wining a MAC Division title the year before. That is an entire choice, NIU, what with the pandemic and all. I’d have to say that was a not good choice, seeing as they haven’t even had a winning record in league play since letting Montgomery go, and the Huskies have a new head coach this season after they fired the guy that replaced Montgomery. More on that in a couple of weeks, though.
Montgomery has a career record of 147-209 with a 25-39 mark with Detroit Mercy.
Bigs? There’s some interesting options here. Xavier Istomin-Monroe is listed as a 7’1”, 235 pound center, and Tyler Owens is a 6’10”, 230 pound forward. Istomin-Monroe had nine points and four rebounds in 22 minutes during UDM’s 82-75 exhibition loss to Wayne State on Monday night, but Owens played just one minute. That’s still more than Vladyslav Semerych, a 6’9”, 210 pound forward, who did not play at all in that exhibition game. Istomin-Monroe’s only missed shot in the game was his only three-point attempt of the night, making him 3-for-3 inside the arc.
Dante Favor and London Maiden are both big bodies, with both listed at 6’8”. Favor is 230 pounds, and Maiden is up at 250. Favor did not play in the exhibition, while Maiden had 13 points and three rebounds in 17 minutes. Three rebounds doesn’t sound like a very Big Man type of situation, but none of his six shot attempts were three-pointers, so he’s very much an inside presence type of player.
Shooters? Detroit Mercy went 5-for-20 (25%) against Wayne State, so that feels like the answer is no as a general note. However, they did go 4-for-10 after halftime, and that’s a much better situation and quite dangerous to boot. Tyler Spratt was 3-for-8 on his own, which makes him a notable threat. Elias Palsson went 1-for-2 and Greg Grays was 1-for-3 to chase down the other two makes.
Spratt was a 38.5% long range shooter on 4.5 attempts per game last season for UDM. Lance Stone returns from last year’s roster as well, and he was a 33% shooter on just over three attempts per game, mostly off the bench.
What To Watch For: Detroit Mercy was a kind of good offensive rebounding team last season. KenPom.com has them at #81 in the country at grabbing up a miss for a second chance. It’s hard to separate “very bad at shooting two-pointers” and “didn’t like to shoot three-pointers at all” from their ability to pull in misses for a second chance here, though. UDM was also one of the worst teams in the country at getting all the way to the rim, as KenPom marks them at #354 in the nation in averaging two-point attempt distance. If the Titans want to shoot themselves out of this game by missing a metric ton of 10-15 footers, you’re not going to hear me complain about it.
With that said, Good At Offensive Rebounding is about the one thing that Mark Montgomery teams have been good at through his time as a Division 1 head coach, even going all the way back to 2011-12 at Northern Illinois. That’ll be something for Marquette to watch out for, although because Montgomery’s teams are also bad at generating assists, the Golden Eagles are probably going to be defending a lot of isolation nonsense all game long.
All-Time Series: Marquette leads, 60-27, although the two sides haven’t met since November 2006. That was a 79-59 victory in Milwaukee.
Wait, this is the 88th all time meeting??? Without playing in twenty years? Oh, yeah. That 2006 game was the first one since February 1991, too! This used to be a yearly series as recently as 1982, and it was a home-and-home series as recently as 1972. You can stack up a lot of games against a team when you play them twice a year for 14 years. Marquette has won the last eight meetings, although that means Detroit Mercy hasn’t beaten Marquette since February 1979. FUN FACT: #15 Detroit beat #9 Marquette in Milwaukee in February 1977, right before MU went on their run to the national championship.
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